April 24, 2012/Temple ASAJU/Proshare

Nigeria (NSE, Lagos) - The Nigerian Stock Exchange today signed a partnership agreement with NASDAQ OMX as part of its plans to revamp its capital market which requires an improved trading technology platform.

Highlighting the key competencies of the NASDAQ OMX trading platform, Oscar Onyema, CEO of the Nigerian bourse explained, “the NSE plans to have at least five products and the current trading platform lacks the facilities for trading such securities.” He mentioned, “the new trading platform is robust with support for - Equities; Bonds; Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs); Commodities; and Derivatives to be rolled as part of the second phase two of its trading technology project).

Some of the other advantages of the NASDAQ OMX technology includes the provision of facilities that ensures better transparency between stockbrokers and investors, support for portfolio diversification, market-making functionality and enhancement capability of trading from different geographical regions, amongst other features the platform stands to offer. “This step is believed to be the right action in serving as Africa’s voice in the global market.” Onyema noted.

NASDAQ President, Lars Ottersgard remarking that the team is focused on healthy partnership with the Nigerian Stock Exchange says, “The scalability features and performances of the NASDAQ OMX would bring about growth in the Nigeria Capital Market.

NASDAQ OMX Vice Chairman, Sandy Frucher on his part stated, “The move being made by the NSE team is a strategic step with the ability to achieve diversification in not only, Nigeria and West-Africa but in Africa at large.”

Costing about $2million, the NASDAQ OMX Trading technology will allow brokers and investors to integrate their gadgets (computers, PDAs and smart phones) into the Exchange for portfolios access. With “Pre-trade” and “post-trade” characteristics, the technology will allow efficiency of trading and help outdo the manual post trading activities, enabling a further extension in the trading hours.

The NASDAQ OMX Trading technology currently runs in ninety-four (94) Exchanges, globally. According to the NSE’s Executive Director Market Operations and Technology, Adeolu Bajomo, “The platform should go live in Q2, 2013, after series of processes and the platform will be deployed from Nigeria.”

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